Three-liter Cola, zeppelin of delight and angst, we imagined your dares at once contained and floating to our bodies.
We imagined each empty spin— steady propeller or crash against knees, crunch of plastic, bunch of: do it like this.
We imagine how simple a twist of the wrist until our turn, a bumbled one, bounce of the bottle, tilt of the world lasting the longest seconds.
Look how you settled, the unholy and holy—genesis of desire swelling in gasps.
When not teaching at the Community College of Denver, Brian Dickson avoids driving as much as possible to connect with the quotidian and the sacred. He also serves as an editor for New Feathers Anthology as well. His chapbook, A Child’s Sketch of the Afterlife, recently came out from Finishing Line Press. Find him at www.dicksonwrites.com.
a blackbird flies backwards from tinted window and you are caught in its starling shadow waking cracks climbing the sides of these feeble buildings
the buildings are in a perpetual state of falling only grey skies hold them in place
the grey tone of your voice contemplates weather as if that were the only geranium your throat could grow
it is better to speak in chrysanthemums, lupine, perhaps shooting star
this city led you, little antelope, into a cunning enclosure
you never learned how to jump, never learned Indian Paintbrush but you know how to run
wide open calls you home in a language of blue blue that holds your heart in place, keeps it from killing you
your pillow was covered in blackbird feathers if only it were a sign
winged thing sits on your chest in the night to cry, but not in words
paved over rivers can still drown deer brothers and sisters, if only this were fable
then struggle would be no more than lesson transformation wouldn’t be so fatal curses could be lifted with the correct incantations
you are hooves and ochre, sawdust and iron blessed by coarse calico, be they ropes or binding
this city called to you three times and three times you answered with lips like milkweed
your geraniums are malnourished monotone grey where is the wild thing you once knew? was domestic chosen for you?
remember to run when the wind calls remember the buildings will fall do not let them take you when they topple
you are so much more than this Underland and ash you are flowers and flight you are the generation of beginning
plant your seeds in the mouths of everyone you meet may it be brighter when they speak to sew gardens over civilizations
a place without shadows or fences where antelope run and run, and run
Aspen Everett is a full-time parent first and a writer as often as life allows. Hailing from the wide open plains of Kansas, Aspen writes with wind in their lungs and muddy rivers in their blood. Aspen is the author of Tributaries from Middle Creek Publishing, Instructor with Lighthouse Writers, and chair of Geopoetics with Beyond Academia Free Skool. They live in Boulder with their teenager and stubborn house plants.
A GUIDE TO SLUMBER; A TIRADE WITH TANGENTS; A MANSPLAINING; A SURRENDER
BY DUSTIN KING
I was asked at a party how I sleep at night it is a delicate balance we dread the midday nod the yawning the staring beyond consternation missing invital information
we dread midnight MRIs self-diagnoses silly ruminations false revelations realizations we assume true for everyone
pharmaceuticals failed us fucked us up we can’t get into it so CBD melatonin in a pinch but it makes us groggy black-out curtains ear plugs but what if we miss the first screams of catastrophe plus wax build-up
we avoid alcohol caffeine one sip and we stay up laughing with whoever will have us
masturbation is unreliable it sends us across wastelands of regret wanting we were someone else with someone else
our minds like dreams like our lives a notebook of scrawl left in the night pages flapping tearing scattering we try to gather
our hands pinned beneath us in unholy yoga poses we sign curses into grimy sheets we throw our phone across the room oh, would we could snap it in half
peer in windows neighbors’ faces lit yellow by the light of the netherworld ogling netherregions portal through our very hands
or through the refrigerator in front of which we stand scratching ourselves
light light light squeezes through every pinhole and crevice like water or an octopus tentacles reach for us we reach for tentacles we march across an alleyway to smash a floodlight with a chunk of pavement but the blue blink of laptop modem humidifier moonlight starlight dawn
signals to somnambulate the streets come to at front doors of exes burning with shame lovers who burned in bed with the heat of a lightning strike body-locked us like pro wrestlers
we writhed free gasping for air extinguished ourselves in a cold shower
do co-habitators bind and gag each other? do they sleep the sleep of dogs in dens sharing heat and odors?
in dreams we fall but never hit ground flirt but never fuck if we rise to pee as we must once twice a night we can only contemplate bedwetting for so long
we stay the dream in our heads even if the home invader’s head vibrates and falls back on a hinge the horror softens once we welcome the dark figure under the covers
memory’s phantom limbs wave dream bits like bone shards if we could recall it all we’d desire nothing but the thrill of rest the earth might replenish
we’d only wake to whip-poor-wills like our brother whispering in his sleep warblers like mom and dad are fighting wrens like they make love one last time
Dustin King would always rather be sneaking a bottle of wine into a movie theater. When nothing good is playing, he teaches Spanish and exchanges dreams with loved ones in Richmond, Va. His poems pop up in The Tusculum Review, New Letters, Ligeia, Marrow Magazine, samfiftyfour, and other rad spots. He is a poetry reader for Sublunary Review and curates the poetry and performance event “Yodel Farm.” His first chapbook “Last Echo” is now available from Bottlecap Press. His second “Courteous Gringo” will be out this summer from Seven Kitchens Press.
roof tiles gray and thin falling away in the sun like ash ‘round my feet
windows cloud and warp with the long passing of one too many hothouse summers
the paint outside cracks and flakes – bare patch betrayals ebbing pulse lull
the kitchen screen door sticks—hinges in need of grease— in its ever-shrinking frame
floorboards ‘round the stove creak and sink underfoot, it’ll need a cleaning soon
pictures on the wall faded, some slipped from the hook, crash down in silent thuds
dust storms in dark corners, settles ‘round pillows and teacups I write “Wash me, please”
but
the studs are solid, foundation holding strong. Ghosts seem to know their place
and
the morning cock still crows in the yard, pecking at its lil yellow stones
David Estringel is a Xicanx writer, Professor of English, and EIC with words at The Opiate, Cephalopress, Dreich, Beir Bua Journal, Literary Heist, The Blue Nib, The Milk House, and Poetry NI. David has published seven poetry/hybrid collections, six poetry chapbooks, and one co-authored novel Escaping Emily through Thirty West Publishing House. Connect with David on X @The_Booky_Man and his website www.davidestringel.com.
On December 4, 2024, 27-year-old engineer Luigi Mangione assassinated Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare—who had made millions denying claims— outside New York’s Midtown Hilton.
Baby Lulu, as they call him, has many TikTok wives. One in Beijing
cooks puttanesca with penne. My husband, which is Luigi Mangione,
she says, stirring red pepper in her sauce, needs comfort food from his culture.
Others cut wedding cake with their hero, whose black lashes & threaded brows,
so tender & misunderstood, accentuate the necessary beauty of his deed.
Does his anachronistic name kindle some ancient hope, conjure a revolution
fought on Garibaldi’s side against a crooked pope? Lesson Learned,
The Wall Street Journal intones, Tighter Security Priority for CEOs.
I find comfort in stillness when blades kiss my skin and thundered tongues hail down my name. In the grey, I close my eyes—
and let the rain mourn me.
Latoya Wilkinson is 20 years old. She is currently a rising Senior at the University At Albany, studying Journalism and English. She doesn’t have any intentions of being a poet, but she took two poetry classes and realized that she would much rather write than breathe—and that says a lot.
I passed it unawares, others fallen, rotting with perfume pervasive as the gnats forming my halo and feasting delicately on the membranes of my ears and eyes.
I knew the yew had metaphorical heft, but failed to remember the sources. Nowadays memory fails faster than legs which also begin to falter halfway.
Nothing prepares you for death— isn’t quite true. We know in our bones that shadow from the hill will only lengthen as the day wears on.
Yew, I never knew you in your glory, having never walked these woods. But is it a crime to feel no sadness for a tree that perished naturally?
I walk toward a clearing, heavy in my heart and heavier-legged as I seek something more than communion with a natural death.
Salvatore Difalco is a Sicilian Canadian poet and storyteller. His work appears in a number of print and online journals.
I have stolen the dandelions scattered their seeds across
fields of tulips and tamarind I have felt desire crack
my lips apart under the weight of its slippery skin
What fresh figs, what sunny flowers What breaking hearts
rot beneath the hills beneath sticky sidewalk pavements
We grow older but not duller hovering translucent over
calendar time
Sara Whittemore is a poet living in Houston, Texas. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School at Naropa. Her work has recently appeared in Interim Magazine, Juniper Press and Tiny Spoon, and others. In addition to being a poet she is an artist, alien and cat person. You can find her on instagram @sarafromsaturn.
Incantation to my Wisdom Teeth
I imagine you being lifted up and out
easily
not by the touch
of an object or an instrument
or a hand
but by way
of your own command.
I see you floating out
as if you simply
wanted to leave–
no force, no ache, no blood.
After,
you are not gone from me
but returned
to the Earth, to the Air.
You are less bone
than soil
less soil than sky.
You are four moons
in the soft night
so there is no part of me
that needs to be healed
only these glowing orbs
that I have known.
And now, they have
relinquished me.
Ode to the Barn Swallow
I love a beautiful bird
that cracks open the daybreak
and re-configures the setting
of the sun. I take her into me.
Everything I know of touch
has been learned from the gloss
of her feathers
and the swallow
down her orange throat.
When I am to finally live,
it will be with the arrival
of hope. The hope
that she will surrender
the whole sky
that was once under
her wings so that she
might return to me.
On Prince Edward Island
a corridor opens
along a path of red pines
long necks
reaching toward a starless
November, dirt like burnt sugar
litters the path I ache
to taste it
but pine needles lace
in and out, at once sharp,
and when the night settles, soft
I am searching for pieces of broken
promises, but when I tire
I will turn myself in
Jessica Bagwell is primarily a poet, but also dabbles in creative nonfiction. Her work appears in Needle Poetry, Sorin Oak Review, and New Literati. In her poems, she pays homage to the lyric and explores formal experimentalism. When she is not writing, she enjoys practicing & teaching yoga, taking long walks, and sampling local breweries with her partner.
Sniffling nose, French braids just a little frazzled, mainly the mid left of the twins, Neck crooked down over a phone knook’d away in her lap, as she’s sitting on the barstool, crossed-legged, like the line from a Jason Isbell song, “Elephant”, that doesn’t need to be heard more than once, unless songs with E Minor hammer-ons, men who bang women before cancer takes the last shot and the indignity of death is your kind of driving vibe.
A question as thick and as gentle as a trunk lays on my shoulder, again:What music do you listen to these days, so many years later? You were so young, the world has grown so ol…
I do my best to shrug the weight of it from me, but I hear it’s somber, patient bellowed breath
As my crossed-legged friend and I both sip from our pre-shift pints, We stare at our phones for a while, and the bellows seem almost gone. She washes dishes behind the counter and chides about moving a new mattress in with her boyfriend who thinks he can do it all, and the folks around me chuckle and grin but
The trunk lets out a hot, woeful snort at the word boyfriend and my mind, my heart, since September and all the more in that moment, is pressed over there, wherever you might be
Because I don’t know…The trunk coils kindly…where you are…It coils tighter, I can feel the hundreds of muscle ridges pressing along the lines of my clavicle…I don’t know if you are still…Here…With us. The trunk twists softly, I feel its leathery skin, and thousands of whiskery vibraissie scan my temples as I release seven words that hang on my heart heavier than the 7-ton creature behind me.
I don’t know what happened to you.
My friend and some customers are sharing beer-tender memes and shooting the shit, and they would tell you that I was, I suppose. Words came out mouths and glasses were filled/refilled they say, but I only paid attention to the rumbles of the breathing, vibrating through the massive, right tusk I laid my head against, as I ask: Areyou resigned to the futility of failing to relax between shifts like my frazzled French braided friend beside me, smirking as the freshly tapped pale ales pass from her hands to folks encircled with Pretty Lights playing overhead? What shows have you seen? Which stage lights have passed over that childhood scar from the pit bull on your left and the fence on your right?Whose arms center you tightly at packed festivals, whose voice fills you up and fills up the car rides to concerts? I remember when they told me you jumped out of your father’s truck while he drove. Out, out, out, your mind screamed from its fog, before the morning marine layer even had a chance to blow past our campus. Who is there to hold you kindly, when the world tries to tear you apart?
Oh, oh right—I lift my head from the tusk—bed, beds-and-moving, people laughing by me, sour beer someone put in my hand, lift it up as my friend wipes the counter but its snout thwaps between my shoulder blades, so I swivel in my stool, my hand moving along the left tusk, and I stand and ask Areyou spraying down tables with windex and rolling out the bullshit of life from your shoulders, as you recall its daily dose by declaring that you will lay on that queen sized mattress at the base of the stairs rather than fall down a flight while carrying the couch because this move with your man is…is someone carrying you to bed and wiping your hair off the floor? Like that song?Is the weight of the world bearing down on your smile, the one I remember, as you and the girls stuffed trash bags to the brim, smucker’s brand crustables wrappers, half eaten red apples, milk cartons, symbols of simpler, sweeter times to live.
It’s bellowing breaths are long and woeful, and synced with mine as I walk closer to ask Live…do you live with dignity? More than ‘do you live’ do youlive with, that Latin word I wrote on the white board everyday before the bell, had us repeat in chorus as a class, that class theme, when students still had the pre-covid mental focus to not merely rotely remember but find real rhythm in a theme? That word that inscribed itself on the hearts of the goody two shoes girls who loved you unconditionally and always posed for class pics with you because no matter what y’all were the squad, as different as you were, that word that is burning behind my eyes and along the ridges of my mind, the base of my larynx and the hollow of my voice.
Anima
It’s tail is swish-swishing softly as I declare that word, anima, so I move closer, it’s lengthy eyelashes almost touching the brim of my ballcap, I say it again, Anima! We’d call out with grins before the exit bell. Anima, I’d tell you as I took a knee beside you lowered, on the days you were high as a kite, or elevated in anger from the shouts and screams surrounding home, or falling into exhaustion in the cradle of your plastic flimsy class seat and you’d find your hands loosening their clench around your mascot emblazoned pencil when we’d look at one another and say: “Anima.” A life full of life. That’s how we defined it.
The elephant saunters off, and I am left with you on my heart at the bar, until I let you go too with this benediction: May you rub that word, anima, into the helix and antihelix of your right ear for others to smell when they draw in close to hug you, may you dip your toothbrush in it to keep it on your breath before bed, may it be hummed in the cadence of your morning stroller jogs, with at least one squad mate, the one who wrote to me on my birthday so many years ago, and told me at 15 that you are a
beautiful and hardworking
mom.
Anima. Are you living, are you living with a life full of life, Teresita?
Kevin Foote (he/him) is a writer, teacher, and explorer. He was born and raised on The Central Coast of California, but now calls Green Mountain his home. When he’s not in class with his students, he loves investigating restaurants in the Denver region, trail running, and inviting friends and followers into the writing process online and in poetry slams. Kevin’s first collection, Cabin Pressure, is a work full of the woe and wonder of teaching, the unsung moments of victory in mental health struggles, and the unabashed joy of experiencing the natural world along The Front Range. You can see his published poems and works in progress on @feastsonfoote
south broadway press 